


Return to Eden

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Inspired by Real Events, Trick or Treat: Treat, Whales, Whaling, historical fiction - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 10:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16406831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Old Tom, lead male of his pod of Orca Whales, reminisces about his life and death and the tradition that his pod and the humans they hunted with followed.





	Return to Eden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamiflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/gifts).



> The request for something about a ghost whale and the mention of Orcas reminded of my favorite story about human and whale interactions, that of the killer whales of Twofold Bay and the humans they'd hunted with for generations.

The tradition, carried on for generations beyond counting had died with his family. The humans no longer waited for his kind to arrive and guide them to prey and his people no longer came to look for them. The ending of the hunts saddened him as much as the deaths of his family, more than even his own death.

The humans blamed themselves for what happened to him, but there was no need to. He’d heard his human friend cry out in terror when he broke his teeth trying to guide the boat back into place when it started off too soon. The human didn’t understand that such things happened. One only lived as long as their teeth held out if accident or misfortune didn’t find them first and when he died several years later he had been well on in years, with many children and grandchildren. Some of them lived, some died and some were still alive.

Such was the way of all living things.

It was the death of the tradition that he mourned rather than his own or that of his family when their time came. All things died, his kind, humans, the prey they shared and, while none of them wanted to die, in the end they all would.

It was only humans that railed against the unfairness of death, but what could be fairer than something that happened for everyone and everything in the end?

They mourned his death, kept his bones out of reverence. He’d gone to visit them many times since then, for there he could remember his life and friends, surrounded by reminders of the tradition and the times they shared. He could remember swimming through the water, the motion of it, the pull of the ropes, the weight of the boats. The way the humans would shout to each other, listen to him and his family for guidance, as they hunted together.

To him it had seemed that the humans joined him and his kind in their hunts out of generosity or the simple joy of the hunt, leaving the prey in the water for days, never taking the lips and tongue for themselves, and dragging away what was left only after those best parts had been taken.

The humans had been kind, considerate hunting partners and he missed them.

Not long after his death there were fewer and fewer boats in the water, less prey sought. Less prey altogether. The few members of his family that lived on had fewer opportunities to teach their children the tradition. They moved on and the tradition was lost to his kind as well as the humans.

The humans had their stories, tales that had sustained them for generations, just as his kind did, and those stories would continue to be told even if they were no longer practiced and faded from tradition to story.

He had seen it in his travels since his death.

At first he had followed his family, the routs they had swum for generations, and revisited old hunting and calving grounds, watching life go on without him. It was a comfort to him, knowing that life would continue, perhaps not as it always had, but that there would still be children and grandchildren to tell stories, even if they were fewer in number.

As time passed and he grew used to being dead he traveled farther, meeting others like and unlike him.

Once he encountered a whole boat of ghosts, so much like hunting in the way of the tradition that he sought them out. Unlike his human friends in life, they did not have the tradition and were afraid of him and tried to drive him off.

He was persistent though and eventually gained their trust enough that he was able to get close enough to grab a rope and guide them on the oh so long swim to shore, for there were rules in death, one of them being that things moved as they did in life, himself, boats, and humans alike and humans were barely able to move at all.

After bringing the humans to shore he swam through their town, so similar to the one of his humans. The harbor, the buildings, the way they memorialized their own, one-sided version of the tradition. Monuments and shrines to the humans who participated in it and the prey they hunted.

There had been a time, after he’d been dead for nearly as long as he’d been alive, when his grandchildren and their children came back to the town of his humans. He watched them, waiting in anticipation of the signals to go out, but the tradition was just a story to them, as it most have been for the humans, for no signals were given and no boats took to the water.

He watched as the humans gathered, celebrating the return of his kind, but not making any effort to join the hunt.

Rather than wait for a hunt that he knew would not come, he swam through the air as he had once swum through the water and went to visit his bones.

One thing he noted across all the human towns he swam to was that the signs of the tradition were fading.

There were some, in remote cold places, where it remained and those places became his favorite to visit on his travels. Even if the humans spoke a different language, wore different clothing and hunted in different boats, something of his own life remained. It was hard for him to be sure, but it even seemed that the humans there respected and honored his kind in the way that his humans had and still did.

But always he returned home, and sometimes, very rarely, there would be familiar ghosts waiting for him, the memory of a boat ready to take to the water, and he would signal and rush to join them.

And together they would play at the tradition even though there was no prey to be found, for the joy of being with old friends was a simple one that needed no excuses.

**Author's Note:**

> Dreamiflame, I'm so sorry if the mentions of whaling touch on things that you didn't want, but this was the first thing I thought of when I saw your prompt and the idea stuck with me.


End file.
